In the journal entries recorded in subsequent weeks and months, we meet with no passages quite so ornate or imposing as this epiphany entered on August 13, today, in 1851…

Thoreau made the following entry under the heading “Drifting”:

“Drifting in a sultry day on the sluggish waters of the pond, I almost cease to live – and begin to be.  A boat-man stretched on the deck of his craft, and dallying with the noon, would be as apt an emblem of eternity for me, as the serpent with his tail in his mouth.  I am never so prone to lose my identity.  I am dissolved in the haze.”

~ Professor Alan D. Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness (p.63). From Henry David Thoreau’s journal entries on August 13, 1851.

Photograph Credit: Time.  Quote Credit: Thank you Makebelieveboutique